Drilled: Displaced

What's happening in Guyana isn't an isolated case. It's part of a global oil rush, as oil companies race to tap as many remaining fossil fuel reserves as they can.

Rolling Stone reporter Jeff Goodell discusses his story about what the global oil rush looks like in another part of the world: Namibia.

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When we started reporting on Guyana's oil boom, we reached out to local environmental groups to hear their concerns about this new polluting industry. But we discovered something unsettling: every environmental organization we could find had taken money from ExxonMobil or its partners. Several have even made promotional videos praising the project. They argue that oil money is no dirtier than any other funding source, and, if it's there, they may as well take it to use for conservation efforts.

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The tension between addressing global poverty and acting on the climate crisis is one the fossil fuel industry has been stoking in recent years. We asked Dr. Narasimha Rao to join us this week to get into the details of that conversation, where there are and aren't tradeoffs, and what his Decent Living Energy Project at Yale can tell us about how to solve both global crises at once.

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Melina Janki has filed seven separate legal cases aimed at blocking oil drilling in Guyana, but only one explicitly names climate change as a problem the project is guaranteed to exacerbate. It's a constitutional challenge invoking Guyana's constitutional right to a healthy environment, an amendment Janki herself helped write. Plaintiffs Dr. Troy Thomas and Quedad DeFreitas argue that the government’s choice to fast-track permits and oil production threatens their right to a healthy environment, as well as the rights of future generations. The Guyanese government argues that, ironically, it needs oil money to adapt to climate change.

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One person in Guyana understands both the inner workings of Big Oil and the intracacies of Guyanese governmental law better than almost anyone. Melinda Janki was raised in Guyana, but went to Oxford University and then worked as in-house counsel for oil giant BP before making her way back to Guyana. She returned home with a mission to help strengthen the country's environmental laws. In 2018, she began filing suits against the government to block offshore drilling. Her latest suit demands ExxonMobil be held liable for any environmental damages caused to Guyana in the case of an offshore catastrophe.

Read more in Antonia Juhaz's Wired story on Guyana. 

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After a year of pressure from local press and civil groups, the Guyanese government finally released its oil contract with ExxonMobil to the public. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) calls it an unfair deal for Guyana. Some local leaders implore the government to renegotiate the contract, but others say that's a fool's errand and fighting the contract should be done in court.

Additional resources:
The Quest to Defuse Guyana’s Carbon Bomb

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Five years ago, Kiana Wilburg was a new reporter when ExxonMobil executives and Guyanese government officials announced they had found oil 40 miles offshore. Wilburg and her newsroom had to rapdly learn about the oil industry and this suddenly influential company that was now in their country. They were left with one question: what kind of a deal had their country signed onto?

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A new peer-reviewed study in the journal Science shows exactly how accurate oil company scientists' climate models were back in the 1970s and 80s. Alongside this special re-broadcast of Season 1 of Drilled, all about the origins of climate denial, we speak with the study's lead author Geoffrey Supran about its importance.

In this final episode, a look at what it might take to finally act on climate.

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A new peer-reviewed study in the journal Science shows exactly how accurate oil company scientists' climate models were back in the 1970s and 80s. Alongside this special re-broadcast of Season 1 of Drilled, all about the origins of climate denial, we speak with the study's lead author Geoffrey Supran about its importance.

In this episode, a look at how successful the fossil fuel industry's decades-long information war was at convincing the public there was nothing to worry about, and how that success led to dozens of lawsuits filed over the past five years.

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On paper, the small South American country of Guyana is the fastest-growing economy in the world, thanks to its oil boom. The country started shipping barrels of oil in 2019. Hotels are popping up all over its capital city. Historic homes are being turned into condos for visiting oil execs. But average citizens say they aren’t benefiting from the boom like they thought they would. And one lawyer is trying everything she can to stop her homeland from being changed from a carbon sink into a carbon bomb. In this special crossover season of Drilled and Damages, a look at 21st century oil colonialism, amid the climate crisis.

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